A welcome return visit to the Kent and Poetry Society by Matthew Caley on 15th October, after his last visit in 2017. Matthew will read his poetry after a quick AGM (so no Open Mic this month). Entry free to K&S members, £3 on the door to non-members. Kick off at 8 pm. Venue: Royal Wells Hotel.
Matthew Caley’s To Abandon Wizardry, published by Bloodaxe in 2023, is his seventh full-length poetry collection. His first, Thirst (Slow Dancer, 1999), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Prophecy Is Easy, a pamphlet of very loose versions from French 20th Century poets, was published by Blueprint in 2021. Another pamphlet, of 19th/20th Century French Women poets titled The Sealed Well is being readied. He recently made a Poem-Film for Unicorn Street – a key poem from the new book – with film-maker Jesse Adlam. He is a mentor for The Poetry School, and has taught poetry at the universities of St Andrews, Winchester and Royal Holloway.
‘To Abandon Wizardry’
“The games Caley plays with simile and metaphor, the word-play, the close observation and the startling timeshifts all create a surface texture that can resemble Surrealism but which usually turns out to be based on a close observation of reality, or, as the poem put it, ‘existence without plot’ (the bay tree tells the coffee-drinker to ‘steal / god’s breath’). As Gide said of Henri Michaux, Caley ‘excels in making us feel the strangeness of natural things and the naturalness of strange things.’However much one reads Matthew Caley’s poems, I suspect one will always be pulling something new from them.”
DOMINIC RIVRON | Stride
‘Trawlerman’s Turquoise’
“Chief amongst British poets Caley takes seriously the vision of synaesthetic abundance laid out in Mallarmé’ s essay ‘Crisis and Verse’…[ ] Caley is a great poet of transposition and vibration…[ ] Caley at his very best, an offhand philosopher and bard of the demi-monde, gently blowing our minds”.
DAI GEORGE | Poetry Wales
‘The humour and playfulness…shows off Caley’s carefree ability to draw lines across time and space. It also feels profoundly European – a poetry in which borders do not exist, and we are all reflected in this multicultural, pan-historical vision.’
CHRISSY WILLIAMS | Poetry London
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 